The Great Gravy Dumping Christmas

Every two years, since moving to Texas, we host Christmas for all our kids and grandkids. It has grown from seventeen to twenty people by counting all three generations. Then we have an aunt, uncle, great grandpa, niece, and several friends in and out, bringing the total to just shy of thirty. Our kids are loud, they laugh uproariously, and as they only get together for rare events, there is so much to catch up on and the grandkids make up for time lost playing together. Laughter, alcohol, food, and stories all flow like rivers in the spring. Half the grandkids are in the early grades of school and the other half are still clutching to Mom and Dad or following closely on the heels of the older ones, finding their acceptance into the group. As hard as grandma tries to organize the timing of things for each day, very little attention is paid to her months of planning. It goes this way for the next five to ten days. And with all the madness, we are worn out each day, yet rise each day anxious to be with each and every one of them.

Lucy, our cockapoo, is so excited with all the people and little ones. Her normal life consists of two old farts, that although busy, mostly must seem sedentary for her bundle of energy. But even after a few days for her being chased, grabbed, and petted, you can see her looking for quiet places to lay and take her much needed naps in peace.

We give ourselves a week of nothing following the Christmas extravaganza, then Jen starts the process of planning the next Christmas two years in the future. I’m finally understanding why she does this; it must be because things are still fresh in her mind of what didn’t work and what she wished we’d have done can be planned now instead of waiting to be planned two years from now. As part of this Christmas celebration, we also ensured Ethan had a day dedicated to just him as it must really suck having a birthday only one day after Christmas. Grandma goes out of her way to make sure Ethan doesn’t get lost in the madness. I’m pretty sure most have no idea how much time she sacrifices for this week, but most do realize she has put a lot of effort into it, and they do make sure she knows they appreciate all that has been done for their happiness. And for that, she is extremely grateful.

This year saw another handing over of the reigns, much like me supervising Troy and JD frying a turkey for Thanksgiving 2022. Jen, for the last twenty plus years, has prepared the dinner for the big day and spent the day grinding away in the kitchen. Erica and Kate took on the dubious challenge of feeding the crowd of critical eaters and spent over twenty-four hours preparing, cooking, and serving, with some slight variations to Jen’s magical dinner, they pulled off a great dinner. And outside of the disastrous gluten-free gravy dumping incident, it all seemed to come off without a hitch. Troy and Jess, who had volunteered to clean up the kitchen following the dinner, accidently dumped the gf-gravy leaving Jen to eat gravy-less turkey bowls post-Christmas. What’s a turkey bowl? Well, having been one of the biggest proponents of the after Christmas turkey sandwich, and in a search of finding some other way to eat the leftover turkey and dressing, I came up with the turkey bowl. It is consistent with layered casseroles but by using a cereal bowl instead. Mashed taters on the bottom, turkey, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce (homemade kind), and to top it all off, the gravy! The gravy is the bind of the bowl and is crucial to the overall culinary experience. Troy and Jess did attempt to make it up with a very humorous “Sorry for Your Loss” card. It eased how she felt and has and will continue to be one of the most memorable fails of Christmas 2023. Thank goodness the turkey was almost consumed within three days of Christmas and Jen will only have a short duration to grumble about her gravy-less bowls.

The remaining disappointment was the elevator and upstairs completion although I think this was a disappointment only endured by me. The elevator had been working flawlessly for the eight months leading up to Christmas, but as Murphy would have it, it decided to have a hiccup that costs us several hundred dollars to reset. The guys that maintain it for us, made time in their schedule to reset it for Christmas usage, and they showed me how to reset it, but the elevator seemed to have a mind of its own along with a little help from those that just don’t understand the nuance of a home elevator and tried to treat it like a hotel elevator. Oh well, I kept nursing it along, with the little issues arising due to relay hangups. When everyone was gone, I went over and reset it a final time before I was going to dig into the schematics once and for all fixing this weird relay hang it likes to do. Never being an electronics tech that was satisfied with resetting something and walking away without it grinding in the back of my mind that if the same situational events happen again, we will get the same result. I always believed in finding the failing part and replacing it. So maybe with the extended reading time just around the corner due to surgery, I’ll take the time to become an expert elevator repairman and throw away the business card of my friends from the elevator repair service. Well, at least toss it back in the back of the drawer of my desk so that I have to look for it. Feeling like the Maytag repairman, I haven’t been able to reproduce the outage and I suppose I’ll have the same extended period of time of service only to fail again right when it is important that we rely on it. Much to the chagrin of the elevator, thank goodness the welder was able to complete the installation needs on the spiral staircase leading out the backdoor of the second level. It saw much use last week. Of course, no matter how much I told grandkids not to play on the elevator, I overheard them at least twice saying, “Come on, let’s go run up and down the elevator”. Sometimes I feel like I say things that no audio must be coming out of my mouth cause it certainly doesn’t change the course of action. Of course, it doesn’t help having some parents that allow their kids to make their own decisions instead of my method of leaving it alone and in response to the “why” question that follows, it simply is because I said so!!! Some things just don’t need to be reasoned out for a six-year-old.

Here we sit in quiet, writing, tv watching, and catching up on laundry that may take another week to complete. We have one more dinner with Cortney, Logan, and Charlotte and then they leave at midnight tonight to drive straight thru to Greeley, CO. We are already missing them all, although we also are enjoying our quiet house and our pack of three (Lucy, Jen, and me). In another week Jen will begin planning Christmas 2025 and we’ll start talking about things we can do, age of the grandkids and status of parents’ jobs and trying to get them all to start requesting their time off. Everything should be completed, project wise, and we should be kicking back enjoying life we envisioned six years ago when our decision to retire became a reality. We have some new ventures going on, new real estate deals to make, one parent to keep caring for. Many changes will happen between now and then giving us so many things to catch up on as our pack of twenty reminisces the last two years. Who knows, with two kids still talking about possibly adding new members to this family, maybe we’ll have new eyes to get big when Santa and Mrs. Claus walk in our front door for that last confirmation of our greatest Christmas desires. Mine have been and always will be that we can continue to come together and be present in each other’s life. Health, peace, and best wishes for a better year in 2024.

Happy New Year Y’all.